WD External Hard Drive malfunctioned & is not recognized

I moved my laptop and my WD external hard drive was attached at the time. It came unplugged while my computer was on. I plugged it back in and now it says that it has malfunctioned and is not recognized by windows, comes up as an 'unknown device. It says that there are no drivers installed (I am not sure there are drivers that I need to install or if that is just a generic message). Additionally, I have tried all 3 ports on my laptop (all of which were tested and confirmed working by other devices). I also disabled the 1394 network connection as suggested in other solutions. That did not change anything. I have tried shutting my computer down and restarting and I also tried the WD on a seperate computer. Help!

Is your hard drive making a beeping sound? I don't have a my book, but I do have a WD 250 GB portable hard drive with my life on there, and I am looking at losing all of my files, and I'm needless to say very, very angry, but check to see if the sound you hear coming out of yours is a beeping noise or not.

I would suggest freezing it in the freezer in a plastic bag closed so that moisture won't get in for several hours. Try that and gently tap it.

See too if you slide it back and forth if there is a rattling noise. If there is, then there is probably nothing you can do.Is your hard drive making a beeping sound? I don't have a my book, but I do have a WD 250 GB portable hard drive with my life on there, and I am looking at losing all of my files, and I'm needless to say very, very angry, but check to see if the sound you hear coming out of yours is a beeping noise or not.
I would suggest freezing it in the freezer in a plastic bag closed so that moisture won't get in for several hours. Try that and gently tap it.
See too if you slide it back and forth if there is a rattling noise. If there is, then there is probably nothing you can do.

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you can pull out the hard drive from box and connect it directly with computer see if it can recognized it, can not install drive can be due to problem with the disk FW or Hardware.
try to listen the drive carefully, is there any abnormal noise, beeps ??
hope it helps.

The problem may not be with the hard drive itself but with the interface between the drive and the USB port. The drives in most cases are fine if they have not been dropped or abused. The problem with external drives is usually the small circuit board that contains the sata to usb interface. Try purchasing another external hard drive enclosure and remove the drive from the enclosure you now have. There are guides on youtube to show you how to take one of those WD enclosures apart. Just install the hard drive in the new enclosure and load the driver files that come with the new enclosure. You should have a working external drive....as long as the hard drive has not failed.

1. your hard drive may have come to what is call "end of life" cycle 2. You didn't designate if you have a internal / or USB drive.3. If this is an IDE ( internal Drive) then you will have to enter the PC cabinet to check.4. IF this is a USB drive some time the electronic controller board is malfunctioning and will not transfer data from the processor on the data board to the USB cable.5. If it is USB the usb cable it self is damaged due to strain at the strain relief.6.The PC Mother board may have lost it's ability to recognize the hard drive.

Try the hard drive on another computer to see if it is the external or a laptop interface problem. There are EIDE/SATA to usb adapters that you can connect a hard drive to that the computer will then read as an external hard drive. The problem with external HDDs is the usb interface built into them, these are mounted on controller cards and that is ususally where the failure occurs.

1. You need to check how much free disk space is available on your laptop.
2. You need to check what duplicated files you have on both the laptop and the external hard drive and which is the latest version.
3. You need to decide to move the latest versions of the data files from the external hard drive to the laptop. This automatically delete these from the external hard drive. The older versions on the external hard drive can be deleted.
4. Now you need to check how much data is stored on your external hard drive.
5. If the amount of data stored on the external hard drive exceeds the available disk space on the laptop, then you cannot copy these files to the laptop.
6. If you have sufficient disk space on the laptop you can copy the data from the external hard drive to the laptop. I suggest you make a folder to copy this data to it.
You can now delete all the data from the external hard drive or you can format the external hard drive to make a clean external hard drive.

Go to BIOS (Press DEL or F2 to enter BIOS). Check if the Power state is in S1. Ensure that USB setting is in Hi-Speed.
Restart the computer and try using the device. this should fix.
Let us know the result.
Thanx

hey im the same person who just posted above. i went to WD's website, and it said unplug the hard drive from the computer, and unplug it from the power source. then plug it into the power outlet, wait for it to spin up, then plug it in via USB/Firewire, whatever. it worked for me, so hopefully it will work for you.

The red light came on when I plugged this drive into my laptop and was not recognized -- until I plugged in my laptop power adapter, then it showed right up! If you're on a laptop make sure you have the hard drive power plugged in as well as your laptop power.

I had the same problem some have posted about. I had a lot of data on my drive and then one day it didn't show up in "My Computer" anymore. I had to assign a separate drive letter to the external drive.

Plug in the drive.Right click on "My Computer"Click on "ManageClick on "Disk Management"On the bottom half of the right side you should find "My Book" assigned to a disk number.Right click on "My Book"Click "Change Drive Letter and Paths"Click Change Select a new drive letter and hit OK